Covering War

By early 2012, as the United States withdrew its military forces from Iraq and the Afghanistan war continued into its eleventh year, journalistic coverage of Middle East war efforts had declined dramatically. This was partly due to news organizations losing interest in an event when it drags on for a long time and becomes “old news.” The news media are often biased in favor of “current events.” But war reporting also declined because of the financial crisis—twenty thousand reporters lost their jobs or took buyouts between 2009 and 2011 as papers cut staff to save money. In fact, many news organizations stopped sending reporters to cover the wars, depending instead on wire service reporters, foreign correspondents from other countries, or major news organizations like the New York Times or CNN for their coverage. Despite the decreasing coverage, the news media confront ethical challenges about the best way to cover the wars, including reporting on the deaths of soldiers, documenting drug abuse or the high suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, dealing with First Amendment issues, and knowing what is appropriate for their audiences to view, read, or hear.

When President Obama took office in 2009, he suspended the previous Bush administration ban on media coverage of soldiers’ coffins returning to U.S. soil from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. First Amendment advocates praised Obama’s decision, although after a flurry of news coverage of these arrivals in April 2009, media outlets quickly grew less interested as the wars dragged on. Later, though, the Obama administration upset some of the same First Amendment supporters when it withheld more prisoner and detainee abuse photos from earlier in the wars, citing concerns for the safety of current U.S. troops and fears of further inflaming anti-American opinion. Both issues—one opening up news access and one closing it down—suggest the difficult and often tense relationship between presidential administrations and the news media.

In May 2011, these issues surfaced again when U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, long credited with perpetrating the 9/11 tragedy. As details of the SEAL operation began to emerge, the Obama administration weighed the appropriateness of releasing photos of bin Laden’s body and video of his burial at sea. While some news organizations and First Amendment advocates demanded the release of the photos, the Obama administration ultimately decided against it, saying that they did not want to spur any further terrorist actions against the United States and its allies.

Back in 2006, then-President George W. Bush criticized the news media for not showing enough “good news” about U.S. efforts to bring democracy to Iraq. Bush’s remarks raised ethical questions about the complex relationship between the government and the news media during times of war: How much freedom should the news media have to cover a war? How much control, if any, should the military have over reporting a war? Are there topics that should not be covered?

How much freedom should the news media have to cover war?

These kinds of questions have also created ethical quagmires for local TV stations that cover war and its effects on communities where soldiers have been called to duty and then injured or killed. In one extreme case, the nation’s largest TV station owner—Sinclair Broadcast Group—would not air the ABC News program Nightline in 2004 because it devoted an episode to reading the names of all U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war up to that time. Here is an excerpt from a New York Times account of that event:

Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest owners of local television stations, will preempt tonight’s edition of the ABC News program “Nightline,” saying the program’s plan to have Ted Koppel [who then anchored the program] read aloud the names of every member of the armed forces killed in action in Iraq was motivated by an antiwar agenda and threatened to undermine American efforts there.

The decision means viewers in eight cities, including St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio, will not see “Nightline.” ABC News disputed that the program carried a political message, calling it “an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for their country.”

But Mark Hyman, the vice president of corporate relations for Sinclair, who is also a conservative commentator on the company’s newscasts, said tonight’s edition of “Nightline” is biased journalism. “Mr. Koppel’s reading of the fallen will have no proportionality,” he said in a telephone interview, pointing out that the program will ignore other aspects of the war effort.

Mr. Koppel and the producers of “Nightline” said earlier this week that they had no political motivation behind the decision to devote an entire show, expanded to 40 minutes, to reading the names and displaying the photos of those killed. They said they only intended to honor the dead and document what Mr. Koppel called “the human cost” of the war.¹

Given such a case, how might a local TV news director today—under pressure from the station’s manager or owner—formulate guidelines to help negotiate such ethical territory? While most TV news divisions have ethical codes to guide journalists’ behavior in certain situations, could ordinary citizens help shape ethical discussions and decisions? Following is a general plan for dealing with an array of ethical dilemmas that media practitioners face and for finding ways in which nonjournalists might participate in this decision-making process.

Arriving at ethical decisions is a particular kind of criticism involving several steps. These include (1) laying out the case; (2) pinpointing the key issues; (3) identifying the parties involved, their intents, and their potentially competing values; (4) studying ethical models and theories; (5) presenting strategies and options; and (6) formulating a decision or policy.²

As a test case, let’s look at how local TV news directors might establish ethical guidelines for war-related events. By following the six steps above, our goal is to make some ethical decisions and to lay the groundwork for policies that address TV images or photographs—for example, those of protesters, supporters, memorials, or funerals—used in war coverage. (See Chapter 13 for details on confronting ethical problems.)

Examining Ethics Activity

As a class or in smaller groups, design policies that address one or more of the issues raised above. Start by researching the topic; find as much information as possible. For example, you can research guidelines that local stations already use by contacting local news directors and TV journalists.

Do they have guidelines? If so, are they adequate? Are there certain types of images they will not show? If the Obama administration had released photographic evidence of bin Laden’s death, should a local station show it? Finally, if time allows, send the policies to various TV news directors and/or station managers; ask for their evaluations and whether they would consider implementing the policies.